


Still Life

by Jewel2065



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 05:49:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10210931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jewel2065/pseuds/Jewel2065
Summary: He said she was his muse. Now its his turn.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fanfiction and no profit is made from it.  
> Bethesda owns Fallout4 and the characters and settings used.  
> ___

**Fallout 4: Still Life  
By Jewel **

 

"You called me your Muse," she said, softly, beguilingly. "I've found a place where you inspired me. Please; come with me. I want to show you my canvas."

His gaze was trapped by hers, all his focus on grey-green eyes. That colour shifted, he knew, from palest grey to a bright, rich green that reminded him forcefully of the lightning as it flashed through a radstorm.

He was almost certain that no-one else had seen that particular shade of green; that it was a colour gifted only to him.

"You are my Muse," he sighed, and nodded his reluctant agreement; he really was uncomfortable outside the walls of his Gallery, even when it was necessary to gather supplies. 

The sun was rising as they began walking to the west. They walked quietly with no need for unnecessary words between them. She carried a heavy rifle, a heavier hammer glowing with radioactivity that almost matched that most precious shade of green; and the vicious blade that he himself had gifted to her; and it pleased him more than words could express that she carried it on her journeys. He carried a small case full of brushes; and a pack of basic supplies for the trip. Despite their apparent vulnerability they nevertheless passed without incident through crumbling streets and around the wreckage of the past as though they were ghosts slipping through time, unnoticed by the madding crowd.

Far from Boston, they came upon a remote shuttle station where they settled into a cabin and he watched as she manipulated controls and sent them hurtling towards her canvas. He could feel her excitement, the anticipation of his reaction to what she had created.

In a landscape splashed with garish red and white and iridescent blue he looked in amazement upon slaves and masters; upon smooth Operators and savage, painted Pack; and her Disciples. Oh her Disciples!

At the centre of the canvas, strewn about the artificial lake, the brutal art once created by her Disciples from the bloody wreckage of their victims remained in situ: Gruesome and twisted, bloody and broken, it all lingered as it had been set, slowly falling into ruin with the passage of time, wind and acid rain. But all around those ugly, broken things her Disciples were posed, framed, displayed, flaunted and sculpted in a hundred different ways, each one a microcosm and yet an harmonious part of the whole. 

Radiating out beyond that central display were the others, each one a perfect confection: Here a brother and sister locked in sinful embrace; there an alchemist forever devoted to her craft. Over there a man clad in good quality, well-worn leather garments leaned eternally against a wall watching the entrance from beneath the shadowing brim of his hat. In that corner Pack and Operator embracing in the shadows out of sight of their respective clans.

In a silent enclave where once there was the constant sound of animals and men engaged in battle, combatants remained frozen in time, displaying their dominance or weakness before their audience. And on the throne overlooking the display, the leader, strong and proud, painted and fierce, forever poised to pounce upon weaker prey.

Amidst all this, in the thriving marketplace, travellers and traders still bought and sold, the slaves' necklaces still blinking red; no longer a symbol of fear and pain but of freedom.

And at the heart, the centrepiece, spread wide across a frame of glass and steel high above the display of lesser Disciples, gloriously exhibited to awe-filled eyes: Two men locked in eternal conflict. One, large in life, an armoured colossus, his display illustrating the treachery that brought him to his knees in his colosseum, his end manufactured by friendship betrayed; and there alongside him that friend, seething frustration personified, the hidden hand behind the tiny red squirt-gun.

His jaw dropped, eyes wide, slowly taking in the entire picture before beginning to examine it in minute detail. In his chest he felt an odd sensation, almost a bubbling brook; joy, childlike in its intensity.

Behind him, she smiled indulgently, eyes vividly verdant with pleasure, enjoying the rapture on his face as he took in the result of so many weeks of careful and attentive preparation of her subjects, delicately shaping each display to fit perfectly into the whole. 

Later, at an old Red Rocket station converted into a comfortable home, over a meal of roasted venison and vegetables, he asked gentle questions about the techniques she had used to preserve her sculptures. 

A bright smile lit her face as she described a childhood of idyllic summers spent with relatives in an area far to the south. Her uncle had loved the outdoors life and had taken his little niece with him on hunting and fishing trips, and had taught her how to butcher and prepare meat, to grill over an open fire; and how to use ancient techniques to preserve trophy kills. She called it "taxidermy" and showed him how to create "embalming fluid" at the extensive chemistry laboratory set up on the Rocket's roof.

"Anything less than complete attention to detail," she said, her voice serious despite the passion that animated her features and brightened the green, "Is a disservice to the subject" – and smiled again as he nodded his understanding. 

Under her tutelage he carefully preserved a weird small white molerat type creature that had strayed too close to her home, and together they positioned it at the perfect spot on the border of the Rocket, eternally leaping into the attack. 

When they were done, he stepped back to admire this first attempt at an entirely new way of creating sculpture and found he was rather pleased with the result: His first love would always be with painting – but this form of still life appealed greatly to his own sense of the aesthetic.


End file.
